America's Titular Sovereign

            Old Gadfly:  Gentlemen, let me ask you a question.  Who has sovereign power in America?

            IM:  The answer is easy:  “We the People” as indicated in the first three words of our Constitution.

            Old Gadfly:  Is that true in actuality, or merely in theory?

            IM:  I think in actuality.

            Old Gadfly:  As in delegating enumerated powers to a National Government?

            IM:  Of course.

            Old Gadfly:  And members of our National Government have been disciplined to act only within the boundaries established?

            AM:  Of course not.  Just consider the growing Administrative State with over 460 agencies, 2.7 million unelected bureaucrats that impose a regulatory regime on millions of Americans.  This is one of the reasons our pocket Constitutions have been replaced with the Constitution Annotated, now nearly 3,000 pages long.  The Congressional Research Service is charged by law (a 1970 joint resolution by Congress with large Democrat majorities in both chambers) to periodically update this document with analysis and interpretations of Court rulings.  There is a growing progressive faction that believes it is far more expedient to “amend” the constitution through the court, which has been very deferential to expanding powers by the legislative branch.  In 2005, Roger Pilon gave compelling testimony to Congress  on this shift.  Even Constitutional scholars such as David Strauss argue for a “living Constitution” in his book  by the same title, whereby common law and tradition update the Constitution, which is very similar to the British system--a system with no “written” Constitution.

            IM:  But Article V of the Constitution establishes how “we the people” determined the Constitution would be amended.  How is the National Government getting away with its disregard for this sovereign power?  Have the people become titular sovereigns?

            AM:  Article V provides two methods for proposing amendments:  Congress can propose (it only takes one member  in either the House or Senate) and States can apply for a convention for proposing amendments.  Since 1789, more than 11,500 amendments have been initiated within the Halls of Congress.  Only 33 were actually proposed to the States, and only 27 of those were ratified by the States.  Congress has been very successful with its “pocket veto” in voting down any amendment that would take away any of its power, even if it is unconstitutional.  The second method has never happened, even though today, 41 of the 50 States have one or more active applications (about 275 total—see data provided by the Article V Library) for a convention.  The Constitutional language says, “on the Application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, [Congress] shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments.”  It does not qualify the type of application or assign any conditions in terms of what constitutes “an application.”  Once 34 or more States have passed a resolution or application, Congress is mandated (“shall”) to call a Convention for proposing amendments.  The language does not limit the convention to a single or specific amendment.  This decision rests with the delegates, commissioned by their respective States, assembled at the Convention.  State legislatures can further limit delegate authority in its commissioning language.

            IM:  Yet, there is a growing body of legal and scholarly literature that finds many issues with a simple and straight-forward reading of the language.  There has never been a Convention for Proposing Amendments; yet, the scholars will provide all sorts of “historical precedent” to complicate or discourage such a Convention.  Thus, academic and ruling elite have usurped the sovereignty of “we the people” in deference to a more enlightened oligarchy.  In actuality, “we the people” have become titular in effect.

            AM:  When do you think the intended sovereign will wake up?  Timothy Sandefur is the author of The Permission Society:  How the Ruling Class Turns Our Freedoms into Privileges and What We Can Do about It (see here  for an excellent presentation on the book).    The thesis implied in the title is well supported in his set of evidence-based arguments.  Americans are losing unalienable rights.

            IM:  The Constitution was inspired by fundamental principles explicitly stated in our Declaration of Independence.  Jefferson cautioned future generations to have the courage to exercise their sovereignty in order to protect our unalienable rights:  “That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Old Gadfly:  The great peace and prosperity (Safety and Happiness) the vast majority of Americans enjoy today are Blessings of Liberty that many in our society take for granted.  Comfort breeds complacency, such that political factions seeking greater power are manipulating our political system via soft amendments (via court rulings) to shift sovereign power away from “we the people” to an enlightened ruling class.  History has recorded these transient failures for centuries.  These are the historical precedents that the enlightened ruling elite do not acknowledge or simply ignore.

AM:  We need a Convention of States for proposing amendments to restore sovereign power to the people.

Old Gadfly:  Yes, and I have confidence in the virtuous deliberations that would take place.  Given an event that stands to achieve a significant historical impact on the scale of the abolition of slavery, Convention commissioners would rise to the expectations, transparency, and accountably such an event demands.  We have far more faith in the decency and courage of “we the people” than our enlightened ruling elite.  The former seeks to protect our unalienable rights.  The latter merely seeks power.

Trump: The Caricature

Old Gadfly:  Gentlemen, what do you know about the presumptive Republican Presidential candidate, Donald Trump?

AM:  Well, according to our noble and objective mainstream media, Trump is corrupt because of four bankruptcies and infidelities resulting in three marriages; he is a racist because he suggests a Mexican judge might be biased against him in a class action civil suit; and he’s a misogynist because he has said ugly things about Rosie O’Donnell in the past.

IM:   And don’t forget that his rallies are characterized by angry protests.

Old Gadfly:  What do we know about the bankruptcies?

AM:  The bankruptcies were corporate filings, not personal filings.

Old Gadfly:  Is the distinction important?

AM:  Absolutely.  A personal filing would indicate that an individual failed to manage his or her personal finances, such that debt far exceeded revenue (sound like the federal government?).  The major reason liberal democracies have bankruptcy laws is to incentivize business development.  Such actions involve risk, and investors know this.  When a corporation files for bankruptcy a judge examines all the circumstances and works out reorganization arrangements and a just settlement among the stakeholders.  America would not be the most powerful economy in the world without bankruptcy laws.

Old Gadfly:  What do we know about the marriages?

AM:  He’s on good terms with his former wives.  Yet, the media will find all sorts of ways to paint an ugly picture.  A recent GQ interview/article was very subtle in painting a demeaning picture of Melania Trump, a legal immigrant, now US citizen.  Somehow the article missed the fact that Melania has a degree in architecture and is fluent in five languages.  But, on the other hand, the author went to great lengths to uncover “dirt” on Melania’s family from Slovenia.  I wonder if the author would be as thorough on Hillary Clinton’s knowable background.

IM:  And then those who resented the picture painted by the GQ author were called Trump-following neo-Nazis.  The name callers (from such notable sources as the Daily Koz and The Huffington Post) just leaped at the imagined racism because the GQ author is Jewish.  In other words, here is the implied logic:  readers are critical of the GQ author, not because it was a sleazy hit piece, but because she is Jewish.  Those that do not like Jews are anti-Semitic.  Nazis were anti-Semitic.  Therefore, those who criticized the author are neo-Nazis.  Sadly, fellow Copernican drones, who patronize these notable sources, latch on to the manufactured Trump follower neo-Nazi meme.

Old Gadfly:  How about the judge?

AM:  To think the judge is not biased is naïve.  He was nominated to his current position by President Obama.  Consider Elena Kagan, a relatively new Supreme Court Justice, nominated by President Obama.  She served as Solicitor General prior to this appointment.  Remember the birth certificate challenges?  Three of these challenges reached the US Supreme Court.  Kagan played a role getting all three of these cases dismissed.  See here, here, and here.   She was also apparently involved in defending Obamacare through her Solicitor General office (see for example here).  Yet, as a US Supreme Court Justice, she refused to recuse herself from cases dealing with Obamacare.  Pat Buchanan recently analyzed the hypocrisy on racism related to this case.  See here.

IM:    Gentlemen, I know that both of you are graduates of the USAF Academy.  I noticed a recent Atlantic Monthly article that celebrated the institution’s effort to manage diversity.  From reading this article, I learned that the Academy cadets were guided through diversity discussions related to the Ferguson—Black Lives Matter episode by a think tank called Knapsack Institute, affiliated with the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.  Here is an excerpt from their website:

The name, “The Knapsack Institute” hails from Peggy McIntosh’s renowned article, "White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies,” in which she states:   

"I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks." (Peggy McIntosh, 1988 "White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies." Excerpted from Working Paper 189, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley, MA.)

Old Gadfly:  Of course this is what many Americans are being taught to believe (even at our character building institutions).  This is why social justice is the moral imperative of the progressive community:  to “equalize” through socially constructed identities.  Isn’t this a similar socially constructed phenomenon harking back to the Third Reich?  The protest rallies then are similar to those we see today—Copernican drones hitching their emotional wagons to the charlatans promising hope and change.  Incidentally, Hillary Clinton and Peggy McIntosh are both alumni from Wellesley College.  And, Clinton’s passion for social justice, and the need to identify “opponents,” was documented in her senior thesis, "There Is Only the Fight ,” an analysis of the Saul Alinsky Model.  The goal of Alinsky’s model is political power.   

AM:  Most of the public only knows what an aggressive and biased media wants us to know.  Gadfly, recall that in our philosophy course at the Academy, we learned amazingly, in The Republic, that Plato offered an explanation for this progressive behavior in Socrates’ cave allegory.  The public represents slaves chained to the illusions created by the political elite (the media, Hollywood, academia, and government bureaucracies as puppet showmen creating the images tied to the illusions).

 

IM:  Other chains are the variety of public welfare programs, aggravated by a labor participation rate trend that highly corresponds with Obamacare.  Notice the steep decline in the labor participation rate aligns with the implementation of Obamacare.

Old Gadfly:  Only by breaking away from these chains and climbing out of the cave into sunlight can these slaves become liberated by truth.  In reality this is the moral imperative of education—to draw out of each of us the desire for the discernment of truth made possible through the capacity to critically think and to overcome passion and emotion with reason.  Given this imperative, what can we learn about the real Trump?

IM:  I suspect there is much we could and should learn.  Wouldn’t it be ideal for the people, especially those chained to their illusions, such as the notion of white privilege, to keep an open mind in collecting triangulated information to arrive at a reasoned judgment?

Old Gadfly:  Yes it would be ideal.  Getting back to caricatures, what do we know about the misogyny allegations?

AM:  If one has been sufficiently conditioned[1] through political correctness, then it is forbidden to say anything that might be construed as hateful toward a protected class (women are a protected class).  As we witnessed in the Presidential primaries, Trump does not pull punches against women or men.  Regarding pejorative comments toward men, the conditioned believe they represent crassness and a lack of elitist nuance.  Similar comments directed towards women are misogyny.

Old Gadfly:  As modern as our civilization might be, Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek observed (the same year McIntosh published her article cited above) that “mind is not a guide but a product of cultural evolution, and is based more on imitation than on insight or reason.”[2]  This is why manufactured caricatures are so powerful.  Do you remember President Obama’s response to reporters following the first presidential debate, in which Mitt Romney decisively won?  He said, “That was not the real Romney!”  The message here from the puppet showmen is that the Romney we were supposed to believe in was the Romney we have been manufacturing in the public narrative—a wealthy white man who is out of touch with the ordinary American.  To demonstrate how this approach was so successful, there was no public outrage when Harry Reid acknowledged he lied about Romney not paying taxes for 10 years.  Nor, was there any shame by Reid—to the contrary, he boasted, “we won, didn’t we?”

AM:  Our culture has surely evolved since the day we ascended the Academy ramp with the “Bring Me Men . . .” inspiration from Sam Walter Foss’s The Coming American.

Old Gadfly:  Perhaps we’re still searching to understand this evolution and its consequences.  After all, the noted political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, argued a compelling case about America’s decay.  He suggested that a shock is needed to reverse America’s decline. 

IM:  Frankly, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton represent and embrace the conditions leading to the decline—that is, there is ample evidence that they can morally overcome the evils of white male privilege. 

AM:  Is Trump the needed shock?  Are enough Americans ready to embrace such a shock? 

Old Gadfly:  Or, as Jefferson observed in the Declaration of Independence, “experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”  These forms are the softer forms of tyranny, where the elite regulate the masses.  It helps to make this tyranny sufferable when more and more Americans find themselves dependent upon government subsidies—that is, welfare payments made possible by redistributing wealth.

IM:  Venezuelan citizens have reached the insufferable threshold based on this model of governance; but, too many “conditioned” Americans will not associate these circumstances with the socialist “hope and change” promised by Hugo Chavez, and similar promises made by President Obama, and candidates Sanders and Clinton.

Old Gadfly:  Unfortunately, the public narrative caricatures of Sanders and Clinton, manufactured by the political elite puppet showmen, are more flattering.  The American public may need more shock to loosen the chains.   

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[1] Conditioned refers to the two classes—the conditioners and the conditioned—described by C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man.

[2] F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit:  The Errors of Socialism, (Chicago, IL:  The University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 21.